Daddy by Surprise by Debra Salonen

Jack knew there were alternatives to living. Some were just more permanent than others.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    J ACK AWOKE incrementally, and not without some regret. Damn, he’d had a great dream. He couldn’t remember all of it, but certain images were crystal clear. The sex. He couldn’t name another time he’d come that hard. And the woman in his arms had enjoyed it, too. No faking of that orgasm, he thought with a satisfied sigh.
    “Umm-um…”
    He opened his eyes at the unexpected sound, which hadn’t come from his lips. His heart rate sped up as he looked around, trying not to make any movement.
    Strange ceiling. Room-darkening curtains that cried cheap motel room. Extra-firm mattress that didn’t feel familiar. And a warm, naked body curled up beside him.
    He turned his chin to the left, halfway expecting to see long blond curls. But no. The head resting on his outstretched arm belonged to a real woman. Not the schoolmarm in his dream. This bed-head coif stuck up in every direction. She looked so adorable he couldn’t help but smile.
    Kat.
    Even though he wasn’t sure how she’d gotten from the other bed to his. Or wait. Had he been the one to switch?
    He looked to his right. “Oh, crap,” he muttered softly.
    A second messy bed—the one he’d started the night in—was just beyond his fingertips. A cold shiver passed through his body. There was going to be hell to pay any minute.
    As if picking up his disquiet, his bedmate stretched and wriggled in a way that made him horny as hell. For half a second. Then, she opened her eyes and blinked.
    He felt the instant she realized where she was and that another person was right beside her.
    “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, scrambling sideways, dragging the covers with her.
    Her look of abject horror was so obvious Jack felt naked and exposed as the sheets slipped off his body. Rather than fight her for control of the covers, he vaulted into the second bed and yanked the comforter to his waist.
    His reaction pissed him off. That was exactly what Jack Treadwell would do. Mad Jack, the person he’d been in his dream, probably would have stood up and proudly walked to Kat’s side to calm her down and maybe make love to her again.
    He looked across the distance between them to where she sat, pulled into a tight ball of knees and eyes that had the proverbial deer-in-headlights look—right after making contact with a bumper. Too wide and not quite believing what happened really happened.
    “Kat, I’m sorry.” He wasn’t. Not really. But it seemed like the right thing to say. “I don’t know what happened. Or how. Exactly. I mean…I don’t remember crawling into your bed. Maybe the meds…”
    “I…We…Oh, shit. We did more than sleep together, didn’t we?”
    He nodded, praying the sense of jubilation he still felt didn’t show on his face. “Yeah, we did. Although…” He shut his mouth. Telling her that he’d actually made love to another woman in his dream probably wasn’t a good idea. “I…Um…We…I’m sorry?”
    She didn’t appear to be listening to his pathetic apology. She pulled the sheets away from her chest and looked down, as if checking to see that her body was in one piece.
    Jack couldn’t help feeling a little offended. “It was straight sex. Nothing kinky. Just ask my ex. I’m as white-bread boring as it comes. No pun intended. I didn’t hurt you. Did I?”
    She looked at him, her face screwed up in either pain or horror. He wasn’t sure which. “I can’t believe I did this.”
    “We,” he corrected. “We did this. There were two of us—at the very least,” he added under his breath.
    Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, that is so typical. Sex is just sex to guys, but I am not in the habit of jumping into bed with strange men. Or—” she whipped her index finger back and forth between his bed and hers “—letting strange men climb into bed with me. How did this happen?”
    He could mention his dream, but he didn’t think